Ballona’s $180-Million Question

Restoration Alternative 1 would naturalize the flow of Ballona Creek and surround it with tidal wetlands

Deep-seeded ideological differences about the ends and means of ecological restoration in the Ballona Wetlands took center stage during last week’s only scheduled public hearing on the document that will guide those efforts.

Attendees also learned that the most extensive of three California Department of Fish and Wildlife restoration proposals could cost upwards of $180 million.

More than 250 people crowded into the Burton Chace Park Community room on Nov. 8 to raise topics for further study and, in the case of some prominent environmental groups, go on record about where they stand in the Ballona debate.

Members of the Wetlands Restoration Principles Coalition — a collaboration of Heal the Bay, Los Angeles Waterkeeper, the Surfrider Foundation and Friends of Ballona Wetlands — signaled preferences for a hybrid of two competing restoration alternatives that would significantly alter the existing landscape.

Some less-funded but historically more vocal advocacy groups, such as the Ballona Institute and the Grassroots Coalition, pushed for a much lighter touch that would leave existing wetlands ecoystems essentially unchanged. Ballona Institute allies sported green T-shirts with the slogan “Don’t Bulldoze Ballona.”

A congregation of great egrets holds court in lowland area of the Ballona WetlandsPhoto by Jonathan Coffin

The most ambitious restoration alternative — the one with an estimated price tag of $182.8 million — would tear down concrete around Ballona Creek and lower adjacent land elevations to facilitate a curvier, more naturalized channel that would feed surrounding tidal lowlands. A second alternative priced at $144.1 million takes a similar approach but would naturalize a smaller portion of the creek, while a third would limit such efforts to the Fiji Way perimeter and the fourth would essentially stick to the status quo.

The extensively delayed state restoration effort would draw funding from California Coastal Conservancy bonds approved way back in 2004.

“We are thrilled that the long-awaited restoration for the Ballona Wetlands is underway, and we see real promise in Alternatives 1 and 2 for the opportunity to bring back Ballona to a healthy, functioning system. … The plan is based on good science and many years of research,” said Heal the Bay watershed scientist Katherine Pease.

“We are in favor of improving tidal circulation and reconnecting the creek with its historic floodplain to reestablish a natural ecosystem with greater biodiversity,” said Melissa von Mayrhauser, programs manager for Los Angeles Waterkeeper.

Restoration biologist Margot Griswold took exception, however, with labeling Alternatives 1 and 2 as restoration efforts as opposed to habitat creation efforts.

“Under the definition of restoration, none of the alternatives presented represents a restoration, or revitalization or even an enhancement. They are all creation, and that’s not restoration,” she asserted.

Griswold said Ballona’s history isn’t exclusive to the type of tidal wetlands envisioned by Alternatives 1 and 2.

“There are many types of coastal wetlands,” she said, “and many of us know that not all coastal wetlands are tidal wetlands.”

Others who attended the meeting raised concerns about disturbing Native American remains and displacing the long established Culver-Marina Little League fields south of Culver Boulevard.

Robert Dorame, the state-designated descendant of the immediate area’s Gabrielino-Tongva inhabitants, said documented Native American burial sites are not limited to those collected and reinterred during the construction of Playa Vista but exist throughout the reserve, possibly just a few feet below the surface.

“There are additional sites other than those identified in the [environmental study] that must be considered due to sensitivity of the land, which is considered traditional cultural property. I love the wetlands, and I want everyone affiliated with this project to care as much as I do,” Dorame said.

Mark Espinoza of the Culver-Marina Little League brought more than 20 young athletes to complain that Alternative 2 would require removing one of their baseball fields.

“You talk about killing wildlife, but with this plan you’re killing their dreams,” he said.

The written comment period for the Ballona report has already been extended to Feb. 8, and officials are considering requests to extend it even longer, said Army Corps of Engineers Col. Kirk Gibbs.

Thank you to The Argonaut and to Gary Walker for continuing to cover this important story.

I would like to correct the record on a couple of things. There is SO MUCH inaccuracy in the official environmental review documents that The Bay Foundation wrote for the government agencies who are entrusted to provide the facts for the public.

Starting with the description, which continues to be repeated – of course – because it seems to be official, it must be accurate, right? Remember George Orwell’s “1984?” We are well past that, and the “facts” released by the government must be questioned. Let’s begin with this:

1. The alleged “restoration” – which at least three well-seasoned restoration ecologist/biologist/scientists have explained – is *not* a restoration – would create “a more naturalized creek.”

FALSE.

The “S” curve that they want to create out of bulldozing habitat and turning wetlands into uplands and uplands into wetlands was NEVER THERE HISTORICALLY! There are absolutely NO historical documents showing an “S” shape in the river this close to the ocean. In Culver City, near the school, yes, there is an “S” shape – and it’s still there, although encased in concrete.

Which brings us to:

2. Ballona Creek west of Lincoln Blvd. is NOT encased in concrete. It is straightened, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. There are rivers that are straight near the sea naturally in other parts of the world too.

The early maps of the LA coast show several streams converging together on the historical Los Angeles River floodplain – and they fanned out in sinuous sloughs, called distributaries, to meet the sea. Several of those meandering sloughs are THERE TODAY, including the one in Area C that then goes under Lincoln Blvd. to Area A, and the western most reach of Centinela Creek, which has its headwaters in Inglewood at Edward Vincent Jr. Park.

So – the levees on both side of Ballona Creek west of Lincoln Blvd. are EARTHEN levees, with a relatively small amount of gunite (mortar or small-aggregate concrete) on part of one side of each levee. Most of the earthen levees are just soil, and one can readily see that because of the marsh plants growing on both sides of the levees.

Which brings us to:

3. What they DON’T tell you in the project description, but what is evident after you read more than 8,000 pages of the DEIR/DEIS and the more than a dozen appendices, is that the plan is to demolish the current levees (which are in a state of equilibrium and nature-healing, and which are working in terms of flood control!) – and then they would build up BIGGER levees – around the perimeters of the state land. This is a BIG construction project. Not a restoration.

The word “restoration” was an unfortunate choice for a project description. There’s absolutely no plan to re-make it like it was 200 years ago, with Tongva native american villages along the banks of the creek. The plan is to rescue the plant and animal habitat from certain drowning with sea-level rise and create habitat that can shelter and feed permanent plants, birds and animals plus migrating birds on stopovers. That’s what Ballona needs, and it can’t be done with hand tools.